by Chrissy Iley
Last week I went to Paris to work on a documentary about a freestyle footballer. Before last week I had never heard of freestyle football. Now I think it is the future of football.
The documentary Sean Garnier vs. The World is the story of the most skilful footballer in the world. It is produced by William Sarne who discovered just what a clever and compelling character he is.
Garnier is an impressive mix of contradictions. He is a former professional footballer who had to quit due to injury. He is the king of turning negative into positive; he virtually created freestyle football as an art-form. He has won many world titles – but he is more than that.
He is a white boy with dreadlocks. A Muslim convert who wants world peace. He is super driven and finds it bizarre that footballers like Neymar (the highest paid footballer in the world from Brazil) earn around £1 million a week. He has brought football back to being its most pure – about man and ball. He has even taken on Neymar and won. It is one of his most watched You Tube clips.
We went out to shoot him in a few locations including on a bridge in the deprived outskirts of Paris; Les Banlieues. It struck me as he spun his ball on his finger and dived into an embrace with it, that it looked like he was dancing with a woman. He is as much a dancer as a sportsman. He likes the idea of that, of breaking boundaries, of reaching more people. `Do you think I could ever make it onto Strictly?` he asks seriously.
Garnier has revolutionised my idea of football. He has recreated his life after tragedy; he has worked social media like he was conducting a symphony. He has passionate fans all over the world. The movie features more locations than a Bond movie – he is big in South America, Japan, Russia, France, China, South Africa.
He is loved by the disaffected. He is the champion of the hopeless but he himself has never been without hope. `I want to be a hero,` he says quite unselfconsciously.